Can Facebook Page Administrators See My Profile Information?

As a Facebook user, you might be concerned about the amount of information you're sharing with the world, and rightly so! But do you need to worry about what the corporate big brother behind your favorite brand's Facebook page can see? That depends on your privacy settings. 

Most Facebook page administrators manage their pages from behind a regular Facebook account. That means that they can see the same information about you that other Facebook users see. How much they can see depends on what you allow the following groups to see: Friends, Friends of Friends, Networks and Everyone.

Facebook allows you to customize your profile info to show or not show to these groups. As I've mentioned before, you can further break this down to hide info and activity from certain groups of people. To do this, click Account>Privacy Settings>Custom>Customize Settings.

While you're at it, go ahead and customize the information that appears when users search for your name. 

Click Privacy Settings>View Settings and change the dropdown on each profile section that will show when a user looks you up in a search, depending on the category they fall in. Since I belong to fairly wide networks, I limit visibility of detailed information such as my friend list, hometown and activities to Friends Only. Since I want people outside of my Friends and Networks to be able to find me, I allow Everyone to search for me and send me direct messages and friend requests. People I have connections with may have an easier time recognizing me if they are able to see my education and work info, so I share that with Networks and Friends.

Customizing your privacy settings, especially since they usually default to "Everyone", will ensure that Facebook page administrators can only see the information you are willing to share with the general public.

How To Friend Your Mom (Aunt, Coworker, Ex-Boyfriend) on Facebook

So you've received a friend request from your mom. (Or your aunt, coworker, boss, ex-boyfriend - you get the idea.) If you click "ignore", they might be offended. Chances are they probably won't notice, but it could get awkward. If you click "accept", they'll have access to all of your Facebook content. They'll be able to see what pages you've "liked", those slightly scandalous photos from your college toga party and your often sarcastic wall posts. Or will they...

Facebook gives you the tools you need to accept friend requests willy-nilly. All you need to do is set up friend lists and then customize your privacy settings to deny access to these lists. When you receive a friend request, you can create a new friend list right there and then by clicking the "add to list" button and creating a new list. Easy as that. Here's how to add existing friends to a new friends list and then modify your privacy settings to change what those folks see:

On your home page, click "Friends" 

 

Click the "Edit Friends" button

Click "Create a List"

Give your list a name using the box at the top left, and then select the friends you want to add to the list by clicking on their profile photos. Then click "Create List."

To change your privacy settings for your friends list, click "Account" at the top right of any Facebook page, then click "Privacy Settings." Select "Custom" and then click "Customize settings."

On the next screen, you can change individual settings and deny access to specific content to certain friend lists. For example, while I can limit access on individual posts to certain friends, my friends might be less discreet when posting on my wall, so I'm going to limit the visibility of posts by my friends. Click the dropdown button next to the content you want to limit access to, then click "edit" next to the word custom.

Then type in the name of the friend list you don't want to see that content in the box next to "These people:"

That's it! You can go on down the line and restrict access to all types of content on your page. It may seem time consuming, but once you have your privacy settings set and a few generic friend lists created (I categorize my friends into regular friends, "Limited Profile" and "Super Limited Profile") it will go a lot faster, since all you'll have to do is add new friends to your existing lists. Doing so will save a lot of awkward explanations in the future.